Ready to Talk to Strangers?

This is a class with two goals:
1. build an exhibit (as a group) that encourages strangers to talk to each other
2. design a social media plan (as an individual) for a museum exhibit, program, or initiative
That’s it. Do that, and you win.

It looks like both sides have made some concessions in order to move beyond their disagreement over the deaccession of TAM’s Chinese holdings. TAM withdrew several of the pieces from its March 12th auction, and will instead donate those artifacts to another Seattle area museum. I can’t think of a better outcome. The Young family get to see a significant portion of their collection stay in the Seattle area, and TAM has raised a bunch of money which it will use to strengthen its collection with works by Chinese-American artists.

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WordPress doesn’t seem to have an insert/upload PDF or Word document, so I am pasting the text of the Social Media Plan that Kelly and I have been working on for the CWB in the post below…

SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN: CENTER FOR WOODEN BOATS

Institutional Mission and Goals

The mission of the Center for Wooden Boats (CWB) is “to serve the people in our [the Seattle] community by providing a gathering place where maritime history comes alive through direct experience and our small craft heritage is enjoyed, preserved, and passed along to future generations.” The CWB’s programs focus on preserving and sharing both the artifacts and the time-tested maritime skills of sailing, paddling, boatbuilding and boat maintenance.

Target Audience for Social Media Plan

The CWB is seeking to cultivate a deeper relationship with its members and core constituency with an emphasis on its non-youth members. The CWB is interested in using social media to communicate with members and supporters (volunteers, alumni) in a quick and effective way, i.e. to broadcast calls for volunteers or new programs, which could then be further circulated or distributed to individual user networks thereby extending the CWB network. The older generation of CWB members has expressed reluctance to using social technology, though most users are on email and have internet access. The social media plan will seek to cultivate a higher comfort level and familiarity with social technologies, taking into account that most of CWB’s users will be consumers and spectators, versus creators.

Resources & Restrictions

Given staffing constraints at CWB, the recommended platform and plan must take an average of no more than four hours a week to maintain; CWB requires a platform that can easily self-maintain itself. Currently, the individuals who manage the organization’s Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook accounts are volunteers who will ending their terms at CWB in June and August 2009. The social media plan must be simple enough to accommodate high staff turnover and varying levels of experience and expertise with social technology.

Startup Need: Blog

Step 1.) Select a blog platformThere are both no-cost and with-cost options for blog hosting. WordPress, Blogger are free; TypePad is a fee-based service with options to allow you to host the blog on your own website or use their hosting service. Below we have summarized these top options and provided resources so that staff can choose which platform would be most appropriate for CWB.

Step 2.) Develop Identity and ContentMeet to define identity and voice of blog, as well as staff protocols for use, and to brainstorm possible staff contributors. Determine guidelines and ground rules for user-generated stories and content submitted to forums – i.e. word count, content parameters, style, etc. Size and formatting, tagging guidelines to spec for video/photos.

Step 3.) Integrating existing social mediaThe CWB already uses YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter which can all be pulled into the blog (YouTube videos can be incorporated into posts, you can blog directly from Flickr and twitter feeds can be incorporated into the blogspace or comment space, buttons leading to Facebook and Twitter pages).

Step 4.) Maintenance and evaluationSite meter or Google Analytics can analyze visitors, most visited pages, and other information. Comments streams and online conversations could be qualitatively analyzed for concordance with CWB mission and goals. Blog maintenance needs include:

• Comments monitoring
• Once a week entry on the blog w/ rotating authors
• Reading/visiting other boating enthusiast blogs/forums and contributing to these online communities by making comments
• Guest bloggers of interest (would need to develop protocols for posting)
• Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – watching these sites for content that could be cross-posted to the blog
• Cross-posting content to associated FB account
Start-up Needs: Forum

This would be a means for CWB visitors to have open discussion on museum programs and opportunities, as well as the common maritime interests that bring them together.

Step 1.) Create PlatformWe suggest the open source software site http://www.phpbb.com/ as an easy way to set up a public forum. According to the PHPBB site, the cost of a forum is free, but some monthly costs ($6.95) may be incurred for tech support or for a domain host.

Step 2.) Decide on ContentPossible discussion board areas could be devoted to

Step 3.) Maintenance and evaluationIn terms of management, the forum would need to be monitored weekly for spam, abusive comments, and site-appropriate content, which would require a greater time commitment for maintenance.

We recommend the following steps to minimize the amount of spam or objectionable material

• All users must be registered members, the CWB would have the ability to approve or reject any individual before their account is activated.
• Use of simple verification systems like Captcha http://www.captcha.net/ to avert automated spamming accounts
• Regular staff participation in forum discussion, so that as administrators they will each be able to remove any problem content and moderate any issues.

Forum participation and membership are easily kept track of in PHPBB forums. A more qualitative analysis could be undertaken after a period of time, likely no sooner than 6 months to a year. At this point you could evaluate your membership to see if you are getting increased site visitation, rich conversation/comments to evaluate if CWB is moving in the direction in which it wishes to go.

Simple forum polls could be used throughout the development process to gage success in terms of CWB goals for forum interaction and to get easy feedback about new features/topics. For instance forum members could be solicited for feedback on whether their participation in these social technologies has influenced or increased their real time spent at CWB, engaged in CWB programs or activities. (i.e. finding a sailing partner)
Promotion Plan

The technology/blog can be promoted from a link on the CWB website, as well as the http://www.atlakeunionpark.org websites, existing Facebook site, e-newsletter. We recommend adding the address to the signature lines of staff emails, and to future print marketing pieces.

We also recommend outreach to existing non-CWB boating and museum forums where the CWB forum could be promoted. Staff members would need to spend some time participating on non-CWB forums, posting comments. This would also be useful for other CWB staff people to begin to engage with to become better “social media citizens.”

Recommendations for Possible Internships to Further Social Media Plan• Internship editing oral history video for YouTube/blog content
• Social Media Intern/Museology Practicum for monitoring content and forums
(10 hrs a week)

Here is an abbreviated version of my social medial plan for the Northwest African American Museum (NAAM). I appreciate any comments or suggestions you may have! Sorry, I can’t fit all the details in here– too long! I would especially appreciate thoughts on evaluating the results of the plan.

Thanks!

Nicole

NAAM wants to decrease member turnover, recruit new members, deepen relationships with existing members and connect to its geographical community. They have a small staff with very little knowledge of social networking tools, very little time and no money to allocate to this project. Here are the goals of my plan:

• Deepening relationships with existing members
• Energizing museum supporters to become and recruit members
• Building relationships with the surrounding community
• Providing a point of connection for museum supporters who don’t get to the museum often

Given the limited staff time to begin and maintain this project, I am proposing that it progress in phases.Phases of Implementation
1 Surveys
2 Staff Plays with Social Media Tools
3 Networking with community partners for content
4 Connecting tools to existing audience. Having interns leverage existing material into online format
5 Launch an online membership program. Personalize members interactions

1. I am recommending beginning with surveys to narrow down the needs of the multiple target audiences identified (former NAAM members, current members, potential members), allowing NAAM to hone in on targeted results. The surveys can be completed with very little expense, and some volunteer time. I am recommending that board members assist with these in order to build personalized, attentive relationships with the members/donors. I will provide more details of this in the full report

2. As they have begun to do with Facebook, I recommend that NAAM Staff members begin to engage with selected social media tools. Doing this gradually will allow NAAM Staff to build their skill set, build an audience and provide a place to connect existing NAAM audience members. This will also provide time to explore what NAAM audience members can provide to each other, taking some of the burden off of staff, such as videos, photos etc. Recommended tools: twitter, facebook, flickr, youtube and tumblr. Eventually may build to a more robust blog site, but that can be connected to tumblr. Details will be in the full report.

3. NAAM has an extensive list of community partners that have interesting content. The University of Washington professor Quintard Taylor started the wiki Blackpast.org which is a great source of information that could be linked to a NAAM blog. The Black Heritage Society of Washington has some interesting oral histories and other content. These are just a couple of possible sources that could provide interesting content for NAAM online. This would also provide an opportunity to connect with geographical community members, as they may provide blog content about community activities, people or events.

4. NAAM currently has audience members that attend events such as the quilting workshops, jazz breakfast, and school tours. My proposal will include simple, cheap ways to promote NAAM’s online tools to these existing audience members.

This would also be a good time for NAAM interns to complete the project of taking some of NAAM’s great physical content and creating some online content around this. Suggestions will be included in the full report.

5. Launch on online membership program. At this point, existing audience members will be connecting with the existing online tools. NAAM will have identifid specifically what audience members are seeking. Modeling after the 1stfans online program at the Brooklyn Museum, NAAM will be equipped to launch an online membership program that deepens the relationship of members, and provides a place for community both online and in person.

My second recommendation is to create triggers that invite board members to personaly email members at the time of original purchase, as well as around renewal dates and other key events. This is an opportunity to increase personalized contacts, further deepening the relationship with members.

I’m curious about why tumblr as the recommended blogging platform vs. Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type or many of the other blog platforms recommended for nonprofits? While my experiences of tumblr have been that it’s fairly easy and low-maintenance, at the same time, it doesn’t seem heavily customizable in terms of design.

Thanks Shin Yu. I chose tumblr because it is simple, but also because it is a great place for short posts, and to feed in other sources, like their twitter feed, or posts from a related blog, like a partner organization. If they want to expand to a more robust blog when they are ready, they could still feed the robust one into the tumblr site. Appreciate your comments!

I’m wrapping up my RAship at the Simpson Center and have been going over my files for teacher development seminars that the Center sponsored this past year. One session in particular had an interesting syllabus and reading material that ties well with the social media aspect of our class.

Crispin Thurlow is a professor in the Communications School who conducts research on youth and social technology. Check out his article “Fabricating youth: New-media discourse and the technologization of young people” in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media (MIT Press, 2008) as supplemental reading for our social tech coursebooks. Crispin applies a scholarly analysis to constructions of youth (and therefore adulthood) through perceptions of social technology. Another good article by Thurlow is “Wired whizzes or techno slaves? Young people and their emergent communication technologies” which covers the range of social technologies discussed in Born Digital and talks about notions of risk.

There is also a good article by Susan Herring called “Questioning the General Divide: Technological Exoticism and Adult Constructions of Online Youth Identity” that examines the contextual factors and social motivations shaping human behaviors, continuities, and technological trends. Like Thurlow, Herring also addresses the exoticizing of the internet generation through constructions of youth.
Finally, my favorite reading from Thurlow’s syllabus is Danah Boyd’s article “Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life” – also from the MIT volume Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Boyd’s article has a great theoretical discussion on the different meanings of public, types of publics (social networking sites), and some discussion on the implications of being socialized into a culture rooted in network publics.

Jen Graves, art critic from The Stranger, wrote a post on the SLOG about several participatory art projects (including ours). Apparently, artist David Hoang is making art based on twitter suggestions. Another student at the UW, Mario Nima, has a sign on the HUB lawn where she is hoping to create interactive graffiti. And Sam Brown draws pictures based on what you email him.

The idea of participant-based art is clearly a focus for many, but what makes our project even more exciting (even if I am biased) is that the participation continues within the exhibit. Instead of taking an idea and producing a result, I like that we are trying to let audience members continously and collaboratively impact the installation.

Our installation isn’t strictly an “art” piece, and I wonder how this kind of continuing impact could be incorporated into exhibits that begin and end with more of an “art” focus.

Awesome that you commented on the blog post.. nice work! An Xiao, a woman I know from the Brooklyn Museum 1stfans, also has a cool project called Platea: http://plateastweets.blogspot.com/ and they are doing lots of Twitter-derived participatory art experimentation.

Funny on David’s… years ago I went to an art show of paintings that were made to be “responses” to personal ads pulled from the paper. Medium changes, message stays the same.

In working on our client social media plan I have been struggling with defining what the relationship is I want to promote with my plan. I find the relationship aspect less exciting than the potential a social media tool would have as a resource both for my museum’s stakeholders and a wider audience. What type of relationship is a collective research project, say like wikipedia promoting? It doesn’t jive with my idea of a social relationship. If these tools can be successful (and I’d say wikipedia is) sans relatioships, do we need to plan for relationships, or for intended use?

I think the relationship is “we’re a bunch of people building something together. Everyone is equal here, and you can do as much or as little as you want.” A wiki is very similar to a group project – you’re even seeing that now straddling the exhibit project across a wiki and real-life project coordinating.

Also, the relationship of the wiki creator is something like, “I will make this space available for you, comfortable to use, and we will have rules governing how things get here and are removed. I will keep things in order and encourage you on, but mostly, you are in control.”